When my partner Ben’s sister Annie, her husband Joe, and their son Ollie recently moved back to the Midwest, we were all thrilled — not just because we’d get to see them more often, but also because they bought a house that was basically a blank canvas. The bones are great, but every room is waiting for some love. Naturally, I volunteered to kick things off with a dining room makeover (check out the YouTube video version here) to set the tone for the rest of their home.

“The space seemed to have received no love for decades,” Taylor Graves says of what would become her daughter’s nursery. Before Taylor and her husband moved in, it had been a college student’s guest room and was simply used for function — “and it looked like it,” Taylor notes. Multiple layers of paint covered multiple layers of wallpaper, but the room was filled with details that just needed proper attention.